Skoda won the tournament for the second time in a row and five of the IRC is the contenders for the title of the riders doing smart game turned out to be a Norwegian Andreas Mikkelsen, "awakened" only to the middle of the season ...
8 victories in 11 races and the first four seats in the overall standings-the impressive results of the IRC season for Skoda, If you change the well-known proverb, taking into account the state of affairs in the World Rally Championship, we will get something like, "Wherever Lebed and Hirvonen is everywhere." The scoring system is changing, technical regulations are being rewritten, dozens of other minor and major changes are being made-and when the autumn comes, it turns out that once again, the title goes between the Frenchman and the Finns. And on the eve of the next crucial race (Rally of Great Britain starts on November 11) the first line of the standoff table is divided among themselves these two up-high super professional ... They do not know who will be the champion: from left to right-Jan Kopetski, Yuho Hyaninen, Thierry Neville, Andreas Mikkelsen and Freddie Loyx. The odds of becoming a champion before the last race were saved by six pilots, though one of them did not arrive for reasons of economy, so there are only five contenders. Finn, Norwegian, Czechs and two Belgians. One is on Peugeot 207, and the other pilots fly Skoda Fabia. The eldest, the oldest, is twenty-two. In short, even the most apathetic spectator of the "assortment" will support someone, but someone-vice versa, will hate ... Of the five parts of Rally Cyprus, one is a purely asphalt, one pure dirt, and three "mixed" if it is accurate, the Rally of Cyprus is quite rare for the current "mixed" race, where asphalt and dirt roads may alternate even within the same special area. But if generalize, it's more of an underground race. Accordingly, the "parkhikes" accustomed to the asphalt must feel uncomfortable. In the asphalt, the ability of the driver is limited only by the limit of wheel grip on the road-and on the ground it is necessary to think further about the safety of the machine, which can literally fall apart from all kinds of blows and vibrations. Among the contenders for the title is Freddie Loyx, a Belgian, who is Skoda Fabia, the last time he went to a dirt station more than three years ago. Moving forward, let' s say that in Cyprus, in full compliance with this theory of Loyx, the aerobatic stunt did not show and could only observe how the rivals are engaged in "retraction" of the title. All parts of Rally Cyprus-medium length: from 15 to 25 km another "parkketer"-the leading Czech Jan Kopetski. He is a member of the Skoda factory team, which comes to all stages of the IRC. But the ground race in the calendar of the tournament is less than the asphalt-and more experience in the gravel drive to Jan to take the place (Czechs like to tell the journalists that the program of all the Czech rally together does not have a single dirt track). An additional problem was the forced replacement of the navigator. Petr Stara, the permanent partner of Kopetsky, was unable to come to Cyprus because of health problems. And the new navigator Pavel Dressler, although he enjoys a certain authority in the Czech Republic, has never stood at the IRC level and never dictated Kopetsky before. Jan Kopetski became vice-champion of the IRC for the third time in a row, this time he lost to the champion and one and a half points at first. In view of the above, Kopetski's second prize in the Rally of Cyprus can be considered a very good result. If not two "but". One smaller-the leader of the Czechs lags behind on a very decent one minute and forty seconds. Second, at that moment, even the second place did not guarantee the Kopetsky Champion: the race should have won. Huang Hian won the most of the IRC (8) rally, but it did not help the Finns to defend the title and become the two-time winner of the tournament. The other one on the ground was supposed to look like another Skoda Champion, the IRC champion phine Yuo Hyanninen, last year. But there may have been a problem with motivation. The fact is that IRC-category S2000 rally cars can also be launched at the World Rally Championship rounds. It is difficult to drive with cars of Leba and Hirvonen, but for such cars there is a separate set-off, the winner of which also receives the title of world champion. The title of this title was for Hainninen the main task for the season, a task with which he had successfully managed several weeks before. Of course, in theory, another achievement would not have pulled the Yho pockets-but in practice the Finn flew off the track and seriously crashed the car in the second turn of the first full-fledged special section. And another contender for the title was less. " The car was fine. It's just that I made one stupid mistake, " said Yukho Hong to reporters after the crash on the first day of the race, so that in the reality of Rally Cyprus the two pilots fought for the victory in the race, and the Belgian Thierry Neville on Peugeot 207 and Norwegian Andreas Mikkelsen on Skoda Fabia. Although Neville is one of the "parklers" and the ground feels uncomfortable, there is a chance for him to have full asphalt special plots and such an unpredictable factor as the punctations (the probability of which is very high in a rocky ground). But he did not grow up: the lingerie was the leader of the race after the third special site, as the fourth itself caught a punctate, and at the start of the fifth and never went out because of a broken generator ... Andreas Mikkelsen then returned to the first line and never gave it to the finish line, winning both Rally Cyprus and the IRC tournament as a whole. "We have to go as fast as possible-but not so fast that the machine will crumbles under you," Andreas Mikkelsen said. Brian Buffier (not on Cyprus's Peugeot 307) hosted the Monte Carlo championship from Prince Albert's hand, Lloys won one wicket in one wicket, Neville sensationally finished first in Corsica, and Kopetski won two more weeks of victory in the Eastern European stages-Mikkelsen, almost all the time, having not won a single rally, hung in the area of the sixth-seventh place in the area of the sixth-seventh place in the overall standings. What button did he push to turn on the victorious acceleration? This is not only about the Norwegians themselves, but also with the specificity of the accrual of points in IRC. If in most of the stages the winner received 25 points, then the last race in Scotland is 37.5 points, and at the decisive rally of Rally Cyprus is 50 points. Both stages with an increasing factor took place on the ground, which played the Norwegians on the arm. And by winning both stages, Mikkelsen has bypassed his rivals as standing. In his youth, Andreas was seriously involved in alpine skiing and the rally switched only after the injury, but it is not worth seeing in Andreas. It makes sense to remember that he remains the youngest driver in the world championship (Mikkelsen was 17 years old when he took fifth place in Rally Sweden ` 2008), and the youngest winner of the world championship (at the last of Rally Germany ` 2008 Norway showed the same time with Petter Solberg and Sebastien Lebom). Andreas ' s cancer career was developing well before it was abruptly suspended due to lack of funding during the last financial crisis. Now the Norwegian who already has a ten and a half starts at the World Cup stages is trying to return to the WRC "Cruise Road" via IRC. This tournament has won the first attempt, than the idea should increase its attractiveness in the eyes of factory team leaders. But the number of places in these teams is limited-and decent riders are usually several times more than the available jobs. Therefore, following up the career of Andreas Mikkelsen's career will surely be no less interesting than the developments in the race, which brought the title of the Norwegian to the Norwegians ... Fliné, under whose dictation Mikkelsen, is considered one of Norway's best navigators-but the victory in the IRC was his first major success